The Secret History of the Global Financial Collapse
For preview only. Get it on Amazon.com  #ad.

The Secret History of the Global Financial Collapse

2010, Economics  -   119 Comments
7.92
12345678910
Ratings: 7.92/10 from 73 users.

Meltdown: The Secret History of the Global Financial CollapseDoc Zone has traveled the world - from Wall Street to Dubai to China - to investigate The Secret History of the Global Financial Collapse. Meltdown is the story of the bankers who crashed the world, the leaders who struggled to save it and the ordinary families who got crushed.

September 2008 launched an extraordinary chain of events: General Motors, the world’s largest company, went bust. Washington Mutual became the world's largest bank failure. Lehman Brothers became the world’s largest bankruptcy ever - The damage quickly spread around the world, shattering global confidence in the fundamental structures of the international economy.

Meltdown also tells the stories of desperate foreclosed homeowners in California, disillusioned autoworkers at the end of the line in Ontario and furious workers in France who shocked the world by kidnapping their own bosses.

1. The Men Who Crashed the World. Greed and recklessness by the titans of Wall Street triggers the largest financial crash since the Great Depression. It's left to US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, himself a former Wall Street banker, to try and avert further disaster.

2. A Global Tsunami. The meltdown's devastation ripples around the world from California to Iceland and China. Facing economic ruin, desperate world leaders are at each other's throats.

3. Paying the Price. The victims of the meltdown fight back. In Iceland, protesters force a government to fall. In Canada, ripped off autoworkers occupy their plant. And in France, furious union members kidnap their bosses.

4. After the Fall. Investigators begin to sift through the meltdown's rubble. Shaken world leaders question the very foundations of modern capitalism while asking: could it all happen again?

More great documentaries

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

119 Comments
Newest
Oldest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Dr Dan Lyon
Dr Dan Lyon
3 years ago

I guess this proves it, greed is not good.

norm
norm
6 years ago

I am in 100 percent agreement with Regan.

john
john
7 years ago

anyone knows a good NEW(ish) (2015/16) documentary about whats new or whats changed or what is the current situation in global economy in relation to and after the crisis of 2008??? thx

Marcel
Marcel
10 years ago

Don't over think... This is an easy game, boom bust than you buy yourself a fascist... Step right up! Get you're security here! Low low price of all your rights and freedoms!

Comely Feet
Comely Feet
11 years ago

Didn't hear too much about the Rothschild's . . .I mean their deceptively named, privately owned country bank - The Federal Reserve Bank. Sure seems odd that they can print funny money to lend governments bailout monies with interest that is to be paid back by taxes. The hush is so great on this bank it's got to be a global endeavor by all governments to become a one monetary system run by the Rothschild's.

manfruss
manfruss
11 years ago

We've still not learned how to share this world. The false belief that we're naturally competitive and self serving is a hindrance to peace on earth. For all those who laugh at religious ideals of a "Heaven on Earth", I've yet to see "man-made" methods achieve any success at global peace, so obviously the use of the word "god" isn't what is making the difference here.

We lack "spirit" today, and a "code of honour". Otherwise if we had these qualities we would have Heaven on Earth. Maybe them "religee's" ain't far off. At least there is belief in the possibilities.

henrose
henrose
11 years ago

It is Europe that will arise from the ashes of this global financial conflagration to dominate the world. Europe will be the sole remaining financial superpower which enriches the world (Rev. 18) until the prophecy in Daniel 11:40-45 comes to pass. At that time, Europe, the king of the north, will be crushed by the combined military power of Russia, China and other Asian nations, who will then be likewise destroyed by the returning Jesus Christ (Rev. 19:11-21) as the Kingdom of God is set up on this Earth. Until that time, Europe will reign supreme and all the nations of Earth will bow before it!

Sam Panangamu
Sam Panangamu
11 years ago

the best documentary ive seen after inside job regards to the Financial Crisis...

everyone must see... thanks for uploading..

Nahela Nowshin
Nahela Nowshin
11 years ago

This is a result of a heinous partnership within entities that are not supposed to mix - Wall St., government, banks, credit rating agencies and the biggest corporations. The seeds of this disaster were sown around 3 decades ago during the Reagan administration with the help of Greenspan who relentlessly pushed for deregulation within the financial sector. Along with the relatively new invention of derivatives, the profit-driven method became much more appealing. Hedge funds followed suit and had a few tricks up their sleeve as well. Policy reforms aimed at the financial sector under later administrations ameliorated the situation for the banking industry, for e.g. the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed which was a cornerstone in the aftermath of the Great Depression.

After '08, the response of the Fed was to lower interest rates to 0% to "help" investment banks that were already collapsing. How does this make sense when low interest rates was the root cause of this bubble in the first place? It's abominable that none of the CEO's have been prosecuted of fraud despite public knowledge of the hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation that they walked away with. Obama has re-elected notable personalities who are friends of Wall St. in his office. Bribery has infiltrated the field of academics as well. Well-known economists are given lucrative sums of money to write journals, op-ed articles and opinion columns legitimizing the role of deregulation in economic growth. These give readers the impression of a much brighter real estate market and possibilities of safe and reliable loans. What they don't mention is the risky, toxic nature of assets held by these banks. People who had a perfect credit history were being given subprime loans - completely unnecessary.

Call it the doings of laissez-faire, (crony) capitalism, market fundamentalism, it is what it is and there's no promise of recovery so far. The solutions to this financial meltdown proposed by politicians thus far are the very same ingredients that cooked up this disaster piece - lower interest rates, increase govt. spending (because running higher debt is clearly the solution), borrow from foreign countries. Increased consumer spending is not even a viable option anymore. And here we are, wondering if going to war with Iran is a smart decision? Unbelievable. Sure, go for it as long as the ex-CEO's of Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Merryl Lynch and Lehman all contribute to its funding.

Dick Fuld, Angelo Mozilo, Jimmy Cayne may have lost whatever little respect or reputation they had earned but at the end of the day they're the ones who go to bed with cash. I'm sick of their apologetic, sympathetic, victimized attitude at Congressional hearings. Don't play the victim card - many of us can't even see you as we don't have tv's in our makeshift tents. Just when you think income cannot be redistributed any further to the 1%. How is cutting welfare even an option in budget cut proposals? It's about time politicians stop running for office based on a social platform, reinforcing social values, traditions and morals. The public needs to educate these nationwide leaders on basic human principles that mom and dad have been teaching you since you were five, that cheating is bad because one day you will get caught.

steve widdicombe
steve widdicombe
12 years ago

It an ancient agenda accompanied by a mandate for the detabilisation and obscuring of all moral conduct, because of the Fed and its Zionist faction propagators.Selling capital to governments with an inheritant inflative value before its even in circulation and expecting an honest balance of payments is patently absurd and why anyone has tolerated such travesties demonstrates an exploitable facet of human consciousness.Rather than a myth, the Protocols of the elders of Zion are being implemented to the letter. Google and read The Nameless War by Archibald Maule Ramsay PDF file, an honest English aristocrat man jailed before the second world war for basically telling the absolute truth as caveat for the hidden hand in the global body politic.
Dont blame the banks? well do you blame the legionaire or the lance for the wound in ya guts?

Joseph Vignolo
Joseph Vignolo
12 years ago

I used to work for a company that made industrial machinery. I few years ago I visited the site of a factory that used to buy machinery from my old company. The factory was closed and the buildings were being converted into condominiums.

I remembered thinking that owning the condos would require mortgages. So where were the new owners going to get the money to pay the mortgages? The factory was now closed and there were no longer any jobs anywhere in the area.

The point is you need real productivity that produces real things as the foundation of a healthy, balanced economy. If you build an economy that is built on debt, finance and paper transactions alone you are building a house of cards that's doomed to fail.

Rene Levermann
Rene Levermann
12 years ago

In my point of view we can blame all of us for this Global Financial Crises 2008. The Banks for giving out these loans, the government for allowing them, the investors for buying them and us households for taking them. We are all to a part responsible, some of us more and some less. But also most of us had there benefits out of it, cheap loans for cars, houses, etc.

We need the banks, but banking and investment banking should be again two different things. A bank should store our money and give safe loans to our company/employers, not make risk investments.

And when a investor seeks risk and high returns, he can go to these investment banks, but he need to take the risk, not the average worker and governments.

It takes our governments to make these actions, but also us people to demand them. At the End we can decide where we deposit our money and when we choice ethical responsible banks for our money, these markets will regulate them self's over the time.

But this is just a view of a young person, but who would listen :-)

citadel32
citadel32
12 years ago

Just for the record,

Did anyone else realize the names of the big "investment houses" that were not invited to the first few Paulson emergency meetings?

Anyone see where those banks are today?

Secret deals were made, well BEFORE the collapse of the financial system that nominated who the "survivors" or winners would be, all they had to do too receive their payment, was accept government intervention.

Because unless you have been living under a rock for the last 2 decades, the battle for global supremacy is heating up; and we are only in the bottom of the first.

Citigroup and Bank of America are great investment targets.

Mike Bell
Mike Bell
12 years ago

Typical cops. Fining homeless people. Their already in financial despair so lets really step on their necks. But they're just doing they're jobs right? Funny, that was the defense of most of the Nazi's at the Nuremberg trials. Is there no empathy anywhere ?

emenot
emenot
12 years ago

Globalization= USA Jobs lost, outsourced(very nice but naive liberal American and greedy Corp America.

Globalization= Live and die together!

Jobs=Tax revenue
No jobs=no tax revenue
Insufficent tax revenue=bankrupt government=Iceland, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy, France, USA......

USA Recession and coming Depression lost jobs due to outsourcing,
China, India and Brazil experiencing unprecedented economic growth from lost jobs of developed countries from USA, EU in the name hailed by Clinton(numb nut believing in sharing wealth leads to peaceful world and the collapse of communism , ha-ha)
ha-ha

When the world was segregated there are conflicts of trade and ideal which sometimes lead to hostility but in general there are winners and losers, but with Globalization, we all lose!

Terrible grammar by design and effort!(of above)

In conclusion, Globalization don't work! Countries of different ethnic cultures, religions and of size of populations do not share and cannot be govern as compared to each other"s forms of government.

jbriggs_87
jbriggs_87
12 years ago

people look down on me because im on welfare, it really hurts my feelings :(

BeccaLeigh
BeccaLeigh
12 years ago

Capitalism is not to blame because we haven't had a capitalistic society in a long time....more like crony capitalism mixed with socialism. Also, the Community Reinvestment Act is rarely mentioned when discussing the housing market bubble. It began with Carter and was intensified by Clinton. They were forcing the banks to give loans to people that had no business having one because as we've now seen, they couldn't afford the terms of those loans, especially ARMs which were they main type of loans that were defaulted on by the people that obtained them.

dkassaca
dkassaca
12 years ago

Capitalism: Need Re-designing

The question is how much is enough? You can't regulate profits so how much is enough for every quarterly report. How far can a company go for the sake of profits?

The value of:

Family
Society

At the end of the spectrums the time will arrive when people will demand thire right to live in peace without woring about profit and say enough is enough?

Exxon made a profit of $107 billion in 2010. That means Exxon had to
Make more for 2011. That means they will go to any lenth to make more
next year.

Iraq
Bakdade

Niels Christian Olsen
Niels Christian Olsen
12 years ago

We have to stop the greed game...Let's get other values in life....Love children and live lifes in hamony with nature.....

Prodromos Regalides
Prodromos Regalides
12 years ago

I could also start blaming people or political systems. But I strongly feel that it is not exactly Joe or Jane that robbed me.They may have stolen money from me at one point in time but they are not the main culprits.

The same goes for the various political -isms. They were conceived some centuries ago and have a certain logical structure, so they tend to work well if their logic is implemented correctly. I could not glorify them, though, if they succeed and I couldn't vilify them if they fail, because their very success or failure depends practically on the correct or flawed following of their principles.

I think that the main problem is money, or rather the way we choose to give to the idea its core meaning. I feel that money should be redefined in its major and minor details. I surely don't have a definite answer to how this should be done but I have some ideas.

If you 're not bored till death from my rumblings, let me elaborate. A certain amount of money usually gives the right to an individual to spend, use or enjoy a certain amount of resources produced in a societal setting(and at this age and era the society is the whole globe). One usually provides a symbolic representation of his or her right in the form of paper, metal, or digital proof, which is not bad because it is practical.

The bad thing is that many people acquire the right to spend resources that do not represent their contribution to the society. I will bring some examples.

Joe sings some songs to a crowd and earns 100 million "trollars" with which he can accomodate his basic needs for 10000 years. Joe has spent physical energy to sing the songs, maybe mental energy also, to conceive the songs and physical and mental energy to be artistically proficient. Joe should be compensated because he spent some 4-5 years of his life in education and 2 hours of singing. Yet contributing so small a resource he receives the right to cannibalize 10000 years of resources which he most probably will never use.

Jang, a chinese farmer works 10 hours a day, a hard work consisting mainly of hard physical labor.During his work in one day contributes the food necessary for 20 people to be fed to death. He makes 5 "trollars" this day which are barely enough to feed himself, let alone his family.He works for some 3000 hours a year and is responsible for the fact that at least 6000 people will have their daily food because of his work. Nevertheless, he never has the right to spend resources more than are appropriate to sustain one person.

Conclusion 1: Attempts should be made, that labor is more realistically linked to money.

Exmple 2: An industry main owner makes billion of "trollars" because he sells about 10 million vehicles a year. His physical and mental labor do not justify his compensation, yet his contribution to society seems that it does. This industrialist employs about 10000 people that work more or less as he(in reality they usually work more than the owner), yet they never make so much money.Should they be paid only 200 million that they earn collectively? Probably not, they should be paid .. about 400million. Should they be paid billions as the billionaire?(since they contribute far more to the company?) Definitely not. Why? Because most of the labor is not provided neither by the billionaire, nor by the employees, but by the machines.

Conclusion 2: It is getting increasingly difficult to link labor with money, the only realistically viable connection that should exist(I do not even want to consider the archaic connections which we still do, with objects, metals, emotions etc.). The automatization of production and of every kind of labor will make us realize that we are not even worthy of the basics we claim for property.Thus, no matter if you work and are productive, or you are idle and a pestilence to society, you can claim little for your contribution and your rights to be rich or poor, even more in the presence of self-evident injustice.This way more of the so called "wages", "salaries","compensations","earnings", "losses","debts" and "surpluses" are not only invalid but meaningless.

If we do not want to feel stupid thinking ourselves in the middle of a crisis
while actually drowning in an ocean of goods or while dying mainly of obesity, I think we should reconsider such stupid and weird ideas as redefining the meaning of money.. or organise our society according to modern needs and not medieval ones.

Fabio Delarias
Fabio Delarias
12 years ago

who cares??

Alister Don Mendonsa
Alister Don Mendonsa
12 years ago

41.18 - 41.37
how did the makers of this documetary EVER KNOW what Hank Paulson spoke to his wife over the phone!!!

StevenLJones
StevenLJones
12 years ago

I think it's time that we test for psychopathy for people in positions of power and trust.

Gu'an
Gu'an
12 years ago

Two thoughts:

1) All acts of any corporations (that includes pvt and govt) have effects ranging from short to medium to long term. But the people working in them are mostly rewarded just for short-term and sometimes for medium term only. For eg, the actual people who were responsible for the financial mess (including Alan Greenspan, George Bush, CEOs, traders etc of big banks) had all collected their compansations and were enjoying their retirement when the mess was in full swing.

2) The global economy behaves almost monolitically, whereas the politico-socio-legal situation still consists of different independent units. A small scale version of this is the Euro zone - while germany and greece might use the same currency and hence is cojoined economically, their political-social-legal systems are very different. Same is the case, for eg, between US and China. So, because global economy is connected, money & investment flows from one region to another fluidly, whereas people (like the laidoff workers) cant/dont.

harry nutzack
harry nutzack
12 years ago

to pin the collapse solely on the fed and wall street is a gross over-simplification... though they represent the most egregious offenders in this financial debacle, a huge portion of the "market demand" for the toxic derivative products lays far offshore, as evidenced by the global scale of the ensuing mayhem.. this demand was NOT driven by individual investors, but by the greed and/or st*pidity of national investment advisors, and the local fund managers and bankers... much blame can also be laid right at the feet of the huge portion of the american public that "worked" the other end of this scam... anybody that actually believed the value of ones property can be viably increased by a continuous process of "flipping" mortgages, and, even more telling, believed this process was sustainable ad infinitum, was a complete id**t waiting to be fleeced, and represents the biggest actual cause of this crisis, as it would have been impossible without the assistance of these property owners.... the realtors, home inspectors, local property assessors, mortgage originators all hand their fingers in the pie as well... the truth is, for the most part practically everybody hurt by this was complicit in it as well, though of course, the big boys turned a healthy profit on it... to use this as an example of "market regulation as bad guy" is absurd... all the regulatory safeguards were dismantled to engineer this crisis, both by removing or gutting existing safeguards, or legislating so a*sinine a concept as "home ownership for everyone"

panthera f
panthera f
12 years ago

why aren't these f*****s in JAIL ??

awful_truth
awful_truth
12 years ago

Many interesting comments regarding this topic. For someone who has actually studied the history of money(myself), it has become very apparent to me that people tend to repeat what they have been told without questioning it's validity, nor researching the facts before giving an opinion. At the risk of bursting everyones bubble, I will instead leave a quote from Albert Einstein, and a few relevant questions.
"Man, like every other animal, seldom questions his own existance unless goaded by circumstance. As a young man, I too went through such a phase, striving to be like one's fellow. Communism, socialism, militarism, nationalism,(etc) while constituting diverse politcal ideologies, all lead to the subjugation and enslavement of the individual, by the state, putting an end to freedom, and personal liberties."
Now if anyone is wondering what this has to do with economics, ask yourself the following.
1) On Sept. 10, 2001(yes, the day before 9 11)Donald Rumsfeld tells the American public that the pentagon has misplaced 2.3 trillion dollars that they can't account for. Why was this not brought up in the last 10 years, especially after the 2008 economic collapse?
2) Why would the American public bail out the very people(banking and corporate elite) that robbed them if they are a capitalist nation?
3) Why is anyone paying interest on anything if money is based upon their labor?(debt based money system since the 1929 economic collapse)
4) Why would the American public pay 1 trillion dollars a year in interest to a privately owned federal reserve that created it out of nothing?
(digital credits)
5) How could Canada convert in one election from a 'peace keeping nation' to dropping bombs in a no fly zone in a civil war in Libya?
6) Why has the American government been unable to audit the Fort Knox since 1958?
7) Why is gold worth 1800 dollars an ounce?
8)Why are people in Greece, Italy, Spain, etc responsible for a debt that was incurred because American banking institutions sold them packaged bundles (derivatives) of sub prime mortagages for short term profits and bonuses for Wall Street?
9) how can the Bechtel corporation of San Fransisco make it illegal for people in Chile to collect rain water because they were forced by the world bank to privatize their water infrastructure?
10) How blind do people have to become before they realize they can't see?

Please feel free to arrive at your own conclusions!

silkop
silkop
12 years ago

I for one am more concerned that some peace, freedom and equality loving (but establishment, cops and capitalism-hating) bum will one day appear at my doorstep, hit me with a baseball bat on the head and steal my property because some prophet of doom has convinced him that I'm his enemy and he's accidentally run out of booze (that's even though I don't work in the banking sector, mind you). Browsing through the various Internet forums gives a rather scary but accurate impression of the "reasoning" and "philosophy" of these just, angry revolutionaries and armchair economists.

AnalogousGumdropDecoder
AnalogousGumdropDecoder
12 years ago

According to the "Are You Good Or Evil?" doc, people who are in big business are four times more likely than average to possess the genetic predisposition for psychopathy. This explains a lot about our current economic situation. I'm sure that applies to government as well.

John Smith
John Smith
12 years ago

Lots of interesting characters and drama but the analysis of the causes is nonsense. Typically CBC gives us a left-of-center viewpoint.

In the early part they say that Greenspan was the one person who could have stopped the housing bubble but they never follow that thought anywhere.

Bubbles and their resulting financial crisises are caused by cheap money, excessively low interest rates, and the central banks that engineer those interest rates.

The series here concludes that it was greed, corruption, and lack of regulation that is the cause of the meltdown. Why did greed suddenly raise its ugly head? Did we not have greed earlier? Did the legions of Satan suddenly appear from the Underworld in this last decade?

Ron Paul in his book "End the Fed" says that when the Fed provides free drinks Wall Street gets drunk. And when problems result later they always blame the drunk ... not the bartender. It happened in the 1930's and it's happening now.

According to Austrian economics thinking the current crisis is not a failure of capitalism but rather that we don't have really have free markets but state cronyism where political interests control central banking.

mattthespaniard
mattthespaniard
12 years ago

The documentary is interesting as a historical depiction of the events and key players that took part in the 2008 financial meltdown. Well put together. Thank you for that.

BUT.......... it makes the same mistake that many other documentaries alike, which is to DRAW THE WRONG CONCLUSIONS, or rather... to LEAD THE AUDIENCE DRAW THE WRONG CONCLUSION BY THEMSELVES.

This is what is going to kill us. The vast majority of politicians and the layman conclude that the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) was a case of a system malfunction due to lack of regulation and that the way to fix it is to grant the politicians more powers to prevent this from ever happening again.... You heard it a thousand times... "free markets suck", "capitalism has failed", "banker's greed is rampant", "we need strong regulatory backgrounds" and so on ad nauseam.

"WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, and a million times WRONG.

The system worked ABSOLUTELY PERFECT. The flaw IS NOT in its functioning but in its DESIGN. And to not understand this fact is to condemn ourselves to never fix it, and to an ever growing amount of goverment intervention in the economy, resulting in TOTALITARISM down the road in the not too distant future. They know it. People will beg for solutions coming from the very guys who caused the problem in the first place. They will handle them readily, and take our freedom in the process.

YOU NEED TO STUDY HISTORY. The history of the money creation system, together with the clever way the banking industry has enforced a system they designed and promoted for their own benefit at everyone else's expense.
The banking syndicate ( I mean criminal ) designed a system that gives them absolute control over how much money there is in the economy and who gets it first. Once they control the money supply, they are masters of everything else.

It is not that markets fail. Markets ( when they work properly ) are the most efficient mechanism for economic progress. What we have now in place IS NOT capitalistic economy and not free markets. We have a shadow of free markets manipulated from every possible angle by goverments, central banks and the financial industry. To conclude that what we need is more intervention/manipulation/meddling with markets is simply IDIOTIC.

I will repeat it again. The system worked perfectly, as it was designed to work. Everything that happened was the natural consequence of a system designed to allow the banks to lever their business in order to squeeze an ever growing amount of interest coming from an ever growing amount of debt in the economy. Everybody behaved just fine, given the incentive structure put in place. Bankers do what they are supposed to do. It is the people's fault that we neither understand the system nor know history and then look for solutions in all the wrong places.

You want to fix the problem at its core ?????? Try this....

1. Stop Fractional Reserve Banking
2. Abolish money supply central manipulating organizations aka CENTRAL BANKS
3. Establish a link between money supply growth and wealth growth. They are different things, in case you didn't know ( don't blame yourselves, keynesians don't and they are heads of many decision making organizations ).
4. Ban the goverment from running primary deficits.
5. Leave markets alone to do what they do best without fiddling with them in the name of "the greater good".
6. Stop bailing out financial institutions who lent/invested recklessly in order to reach for excess profits. When a bank fails in its investment, you need to restructure its balance sheet by letting the stock holders AND the bondholders pay for their mismanagement, NOT the taxpayer. No one is too big to fail. That is a lie, a self serving cry from the banking sector. LET THEM FAIL.

Only then, the incentive structure will be one of wealth creation instead of wealth predation. Problem is whoever really understood the issue and tried to fix it before ended up dead.... such is the power of the money changer's lobby.

Take care. In the meantime prepare for the next one. It's simply not true that no one saw it coming. Many people did and they did not stop warning. The mechanism has been well known for centuries. We have only ourselves to blame.

Cheers.

Jamie19786
Jamie19786
12 years ago

How rich should a person be allowed well others willing to work or disabeled lose their housers and everthing they have.It did not ger into how the government bailed the richest people and banks in the country out.They kept there money well most Americans lost theres.Now one is to big to fail millions of people failed that worked much harder for much less.Realy we need a complete change by someone that cam't be bought by banks or countrys.Ron Paul is that person that just by his recorde and looking at him he will do whats best for America in all ways.If the country has anyone else there just going to get more of the same.The country is bankrupt and needs a face lift Ron Paul will give it.In 2008 thet lauphed at his ideas and now steal them but with no intension of changing the ststus qou.I'm Canadian and not an expert but if I was ever sure of somthing its Ron Paul has to be Americas next prestdent for many reasons.He wii bring all the troops home and close the over 130 bases around the world that America should not have and can't affored.Please America wake up you can only do so much in 8 years but he can show the people what the country could be with full constitutional freedoms.Its up to you hope you smart and don't pass on what may be Americas last chance.

StevenJ
StevenJ
12 years ago

We need a middle class but we do not NEED rich people or class. What happens if there are no rich people? Thomas Paine wanted the constitution to ban the unfettered accumulation of wealth but all the super rich attendees voted it down. No middle class and people like hitler come to power. runaway inflation wiped out german middle class in mid twenties. But rich people are simply not necessary for a healthy society.

Moghedia
Moghedia
12 years ago

The Bankers say 'It's not our fault, we should have been regulated more strictly'.
The regulation says 'That we didn't regulate strictly doesn't give them licence to act immorally'.

I say 'HANG THE F****N LOT OF THEM'.

N B
N B
12 years ago

And nothing has been corrected since the crash in 2008. Worse, most governments have responded by burdening their populations with even more debt in an effort to postpone the inevitable collapse. It's like putting a band-aid on a malignant tumor. ... It's to be expected, I suppose. Government has almost always proven incapable of solving problems (although they are great at generating them). Looks like we're in for another "natural" correction. That usually means depression and war.

Yavanna
Yavanna
12 years ago

I simply cannot watch a doc with a giant website gold scam dot com emblazoned it across for 3 hours. Shame. Sounded interesting.

Guest
Guest
12 years ago

Are most families of 4 willing to...
not have two cars (or three or four depending on the age of the kids)?
not have 4 TV?
not have 4 computers?
not have 4 credit cards (or many more)?
not have 4 cell phones?
not have 100 pairs of shoes, coats, jeans, ect...?
not have the latest, the fastest, the most of the most?
not go shopping every saturday and sunday?
not buy a loto ticket every week?
Are any family interested in being above having?
Are the rich there because we are willing to put them there?
Are any of us silently dreaming to be rich too?
az

Yi Wen Qian
Yi Wen Qian
12 years ago

You know what strikes me? All you needed to prevent this global crisis was to make a law: you can't lend 100% of the value of a property, 90% is the maximum, because value can go down and no one is protecting anyone. That's yet... simple isn't it? Ok, so it wouldn't completely fix everything, but it would help... a lot.

Guest
Guest
12 years ago

@To All
For lots of great articles on what's happening in New York and elsewhere with the OWS movement, go to Alternet . org. You'll get a lot of coverage there you won't find in any corporate-owned major media outlets. Those outlets definitely want you to know as little as possible about what may finally be starting to happen.

Susan Kaeser
Susan Kaeser
12 years ago

I liked this presentation and don't have a problem with it's soft touch. Some of us already know the system is broken but others have to take this in small doses. The implications are huge and the fallout from these toxic assets is not over.

If nothing else...inspiration to find out as much as possible about what happened, who was responsible and look at the changes that must be made.

I'd start with campaign finance reform and put a stop to the corporate infiltration of Washington. I'd add a whole lot of lobbyists to the ranks of the unemployed.

Joe
Joe
12 years ago

Two things stuck me in this doc, 1st that AIG VP Cassano and 2nd Struss-Kahn.
First about Cassano, he said that he didn't want to answer any question, I think the question that should of been asked was. "Do you want a blindfold or not"? Struss-Kahn, one has to wonder if this guy was set up in that NYC hotel room? Somebody very powerful knew he was a very sexual person and figure it was a good way to get rid of him. After watching this I think one has to look to BOHICA bend over here it comes again

tariqxl
tariqxl
12 years ago

That sheriff, to me, full of b.s. Even if I had a family to look after I could not see another family homeless, I would, as they call it in the army refuse to soldier... Thats why I'm no longer in lol... too many morals, if I did do that to just one family I'd be physically sick for the rest of my days. We are all caught up in a system and its easy to forget that we have choices but anyone whinging and whining ''ohh I have to do some horrible things just to earn some cotton with some dead dudes face on'', have in fact made a choice. That c.o.p (corporate office protector) stands with the bankers. I sincerely hope that the family he may be providing for are filled with disgust and enforce ironic justice by leaving him to stand with the bankers and with some added karmic justice, the wife should take the house.

Omniman
Omniman
12 years ago

The only thing more pathetic than the state of capitalism, is the Ayn Rand book clubs claiming the solution is more capitalism.

Matt Kukowski
Matt Kukowski
12 years ago

We have to realize that this is ONLY THE BEGINNING of 'the melt down'. By no means is this over. It is only going to worsen. People will lose it and start fighting... WW 3 is on it's way. This is NO exaggeration. After watching this doc... it just confirmed how angry people can get... when the collapse continues and continues and worsens... WW 3 will happen, because that is the only way human beings know how to 'reset' and start over.

What we do when things collapse UTTERLY and for long periods of time is look for hope in a crazed leader to create order again. They create new hopes by utterly destroying EVERYTHING in order to 'reset' and build it all up again.

Nature itself works in this way. An exploding star triggers dormant gas clouds to swirl and form and light up.

Regan
Regan
12 years ago

One employee of AIG threatens the whole company? WTF?? and Hank Paulson is made out to be nothing more than an incompetent buffoon?? What a sham!! I stopped watching after this, it purports to be a heavy hitting expose but is little more than a dramatisation of cherry picked details sanitized for mainstream. It does absolutley nothing to show how knowingly involved Paulson, Geitner, Greenspan and Co. really where (and still are) in the engineered collapse of our financial system. What a farce! How about launching an investigation into the crimes these self serving criminals have perpetrated on an unsuspecting global community.

Sieben Stern
Sieben Stern
12 years ago

I think the first mistake was thinking that the 'federal' reserve would control banks - when it is owned by banks in the first place - from making mistakes, and has no incentive to stop banks making money and take into account people and the system over profits.

djc200
djc200
12 years ago

And here I go auditing (Sarbanes Oxley 404 IT testing) another one of these huge insurance companies vis-à-vis this week. I'll let you tdf buffs know how it goes down. :)

Aaron Thomas
Aaron Thomas
12 years ago

This really is just the tip of the iceberg.... Unfortunately we have all been sold tickets and must sail on the Titantic. Knowing this our Governments have provided us with inflatable life rafts bought at a discount from the same people who built the unsinkable, sinkable ship!!

morgmorg
morgmorg
12 years ago

I think the problem is that it's way to easy for CEO's and the likes to escape responsibility.
Make them more and easily accountable and we won't have half the problems ever again.
End communication.

Aaron Walter
Aaron Walter
12 years ago

it is extremely scary to see how connected we are, and how much the greed of so few can take such a toll on not just one country but the world. if this is how the monetary system works with bubbles that pop and us to pay for the clean up, then maybe it is time for a new system or a reform of the old one. bone chilling and awakening stuff